UPI reports 1.15 billion transactions in October

Bankers in the know of the matter told ET that UPI payments jumped sharply during the Diwali festival weekend, when consumption peaked in the country.Pratik Bhakta | ETtech | November 01, 2019, 19:15 IST

Interbank fund transfer mechanism Unified Payments Interface reported 1.15 billion transactions in October, according to the latest data shared by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a 20% jump from September.

The total amount of money transferred through the platform stood at Rs 1.9 lakh crore last month.

In September, UPI saw 960 million transactions, while it crossed 900 million transactions in August.

The fund transfer mechanism, which was set up in 2016, has seen rapid adoption over the last three years. While UPI is the settlement railroad run by NPCI, multiple players like Paytm, PhonePe and Google have played a major role in driving adoption among the masses.

Bankers in the know of the matter told ET that UPI payments jumped sharply during the Diwali festival weekend, when consumption peaked in the country.

“This is a massive milestone, UPI was a visionary idea, and its amazing success is proof that if the Indian government, regulators and industry collaborate well, India can build globally competitive, large-scale ecosystems and platforms,” said Sameer Nigam, chief executive officer, PhonePe.

Starting out as a peer-to-peer payment mode, UPI has now entered into the merchant transactions space as well. Players like Paytm and PhonePe are all betting on QR code-based merchant payments to happen on UPI.

“'UPI is the positive demonetization of India. It is helping lay the foundation for payments becoming toll free and available to all. The next wave of innovation is on using UPI to drive financial inclusion among masses. It is bringing fintech (startups) on par with banks,” said Ashneer Grover, cofounder, BharatPe.

Besides adoption in metros, payment companies have seen strong adoption of UPI in small towns and cities, which shows that it can help bridge the rural-urban divide in digital payments.

“Two out of every three transactions on Google Pay come from beyond the top 7 cities…features such as availability in eight Indian languages as well as innovations like the recent Diwali offer on Google Pay have helped drive virality about digital payments to millions of new users,” said Ambarish Kenghe, director, product management, Google Pay.

When it started, banks were allowed to offer UPI payments, and third-party service providers like Google, WhatsApp, PhonePe were allowed to integrate with banks and offer the front-end payment applications.

Besides UPI, another interbank fund transfer mechanism, IMPS, also showed a strong jump in October. It recorded 236 million transactions, with over Rs 2 lakh crore being transferred through the platform.